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ʿAbd al-Samad in Arabia: The Yemeni Years of a Shaykh from Sumatra

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ʿAbd al-Samad in Arabia:
The Yemeni Years of a Shaykh from Sumatra

R. Michael Feener*

This paper provides an in-depth exploration of a previously under-utilized Arabic


source for the history of Islam in Southeast Asia. This text, Al-Nafas al-Yamani
was compiled in the Yemen by ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Sulayman al-Ahdal (d. 1250
H./1835 C.E.), and includes a biographical sketch of the Sumatran scholar ʿAbd al-
Samad b. ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Jawi al-Palimbani. Through a close, annotated reading
of that text this article develops new insights into the configuration of people and
ideas populating specific nodes of trans-regional networks in Sumatra and Arabia in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the same time, it also brings to light
important dimensions of Sufi belief and ritual practice during this important transi-
tional period of Islamic history in Southeast Asia. This material is then further
explored through a discussion of some ways in which documents of this type might
be approached by historians working on the intellectual and cultural history of early
modern Southeast Asia more broadly.

Keywords: Islam, Indonesia, Sumatra, Arabia, Sufism, history

This article aims to contribute to our understanding of the history of Islam in pre-modern
Southeast Asia through the critical examination of previously under-utilized source mate-
rial.1) In particular, it presents a translation and close examination of an excerpt from a
work written in the tradition of Arabic “biographical dictionaries” (tabaqat) that may serve
to supplement the source bases traditionally consulted for the history of Islam in South-
east Asia and its “inter-Asia connections” in the eighteenth century.2) The discussion
begins with the contexts in which the Sufi scholar discussed in the text was born, focus-
ing on the Sumatran city of Palembang and the Arab diaspora in the Indonesian Archi-

* Department of History, National University of Singapore, 21 Lower Kent Ridge Road, Singa-
pore 119077
e-mail: hisfm@nus.edu.sg
1) I would like to thank Merle Ricklefs, and the anonymous reviewers of the journal for their construc-
tive comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
2) My thinking in these terms has benefitted much from my ongoing collaboration with Prasenjit Duara
and colleagues at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute in our reading
group on the “Historical Sociology of Asian Connections.”

Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, August 2015, pp. 259–277 259
© Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University
260 R. M. Feener

pelago. I will then introduce the main character of our story, ʿAbd al-Samad al-Jawi
“al-Palimbani,” with a focus on his scholarly pedigree, and the place of his work in the
reconfiguration of Sufi thought and practice in Southeast Asia. From there the focus
shifts to the site where his Arabic biography was composed, the “scholars’ city” of Zabid
in the Yemen—and thence to a close reading of the text that reveals ʿAbd al-Samad’s
position in contemporary debates on Sufi thought and practice that established his place
in the global scholarly networks that came together in Arabia during his lifetime.
The article concludes with reflections on how documents like this tabaqat text might
be approached by historians working on intellectual and cultural histories of early modern
Southeast Asia. There attention turns to frameworks for the interpretation of such bio-
graphical texts of individual scholars, and how they might be read in relation to the
magisterial macro-histories of Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean world produced by
scholars like K. N. Chaudhuri (1990), Anthony Reid (1993; 1988), and Denys Lombard
(1990). These works have helped us immensely in identifying some of the most signifi-
cant broad historical patterns across the region during the early modern period. Moving
back and forth between such “oceanic” perspectives and the individual focus presented
by documents like this Arabic biographical text can, I argue, help us to better appreciate
the specific character of inter-personal network linkages crucial to developing more
nuanced understandings of the intellectual and cultural history of early modern Southeast
Asia. For that, however, a brief introduction to this genre of Arabic biographical texts is
first necessary.

Arabic Biographical Dictionaries (Tabaqat)

Tabaqat are collections of individual biographical entries in a more or less standardized


format, and arranged in one of a number of ways, including alphabetically, by generation,
or chronologically by one’s year of death. Such works have long served historians of
Muslim societies, particularly those focusing their work on the Arabicized “Central
Lands” of Islam, as primary sources for intellectual and social history.3) Some scholars,
though far fewer in number, have also turned to such texts as sources for the history of
Islam in Southeast Asia.4) This paper presents a close reading of one such text with an
eye to highlighting ways in which readings of works of this type may be integrated into

3) For more on this genre of literature, see Gibb (1962); Hafsi (1976; 1977); al-Qadi (1995).
4) The most notable work in this direction has been that of Johns (1978); Azra (2004). For work trac-
ing even earlier connections between Southeast Asia and the Arabian peninsula through Arabic
language sources, see Feener and Laffan (2005).
ʿAbd al-Samad in Arabia 261

discussions of various aspects of the history of early modern Southeast Asia. In doing
this, however, I am not claiming that studies of such materials will completely solve the
problem of sources facing historians working in this field. Rather I would like to more
modestly suggest that their careful use may help us in glimpsing aspects of certain
developments that feature less prominently, if at all, in contemporary documents in
European and Southeast Asian languages from the early-modern period.5)
The text upon which I will focus here is entitled, Al-Nafas al-Yamani (al-Rahman
1979), has yet to receive such treatment.6) It was compiled by ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Sulayman
al-Ahdal (d. 1250 H./1835 C.E.),7) a scholar who descended from a long line of South
Arabian sayyids distinguished for their religious learning (Löfgren 1960 I, 255–256).8)
While active mainly in the Tihama and the Hijaz, the al-Ahdal family were linked through
scholarly circles in Arabia to extensive networks of scholars from all around the Indian
Ocean world and beyond. The author of our text, ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Sulayman al-Ahdal,
in particular is reported to have both received ijazas from, and issued the same to, schol-
ars “from every corner of the Muslim world” (Haykel 2014). These connections are
clearly reflected in the biographies of ʿAbd al-Samad “al-Jawi” (and others) discussed in
our text. Since the fifteenth century, scholars of the Ahdal family produced works across
a broad range of the Islamic religious sciences, with many of them devoting considerable
attention to Sufism. Some of the most illustrious scholars of their line, however, also
composed important works of history and biography (Voll 2014).
ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Sulayman al-Ahdal’s biographical dictionary contains entries on
dozens of the most prominent figures in the Muslim scholarly networks of the eighteenth-

5) For an overview of this earlier history of Islam in Southeast Asia, see Feener (2010).
6) In the preface to this print edition, the full title is given as: al-Nafas al-Yamani waʾl-ruh al-rahayni
fi ijazat al-qudat baniʾl-Shawkani. Serjeant (1950, 587) refers to this text under the title of, al-Nafas
al-yamani fi ijazat baniʾl-Shawkani. See also O’Fahey (1994). The use of the word nafas in the
title plays upon a well-established Sufi trope in the form of a tradition in which the Prophet is
believed to speak of Uways al-Qarani with the words, “The Breath of the Merciful (nafas al-Rahman)
comes to me from the Yemen.”
7) He studied at both Zabid and Medina under several prominent shaykhs, including Muhammad b.
ʿAlaʾuddin al-Mizjaji, Muhammad Murtada al-Zabidi, and Muhammad b. ʿAli b. Muhammad al-
Shawkani. He eventually went on to become mufti of Zabid in 1197 H./ 1783 C.E., and was host to
the Maghribi saint Ahmad b. Idris during his visit to this city in 1243 H./1827-28 C.E. See al-
Shawkani (n.d., 267–268); al-Sanaʿi (1929, 30–31); and Brockelmann (1937–42, 1311)
8) Their line is traced back to the sixth Shiʿite Imam Jaʿfar al-Sadiq through such well-known saints
as the miracle-working Abuʾl-Hasan ʿAli b. ʿUmar b. Muhammad al-Ahdal, whose tomb to the north
of Bayt al-Faqih in the Tihama remains a pilgrimage site to this day. See al-Zabidi (1986, 195–198).
Another work on this prominent family of Sufis and scholars, entitled al-Nasiha al-ʿalawiyya liʾl-sada
al-ahdaliyya, is attributed to Muhammad al-Samman (Hunwick and O’Fahey 1994). Muhammad
al-Samman is one of the scholars listed in al-Ahdal’s work as being active in the same Arabian Sufi
circles as ʿAbd al-Samad.
262 R. M. Feener

century Yemen, and is thus a source with great potential value for research into this
period of Southeast Asian Islamic history. The importance of al-Ahdal’s Nafas al-Yamani
for the study of the world of Islamic scholarship during this dynamic period has been
demonstrated by Stefan Reichmuth (1999) in his study of the great South Asian hadith
transmitter and lexicographer, Murtada al-Zabidi (d. 1791). This paper will focus on this
biographical dictionary’s entry on a figure more generally known through Malay-language
sources: Shaykh ʿAbd al-Samad b. ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Jawi, often referred to in Southeast
Asia as “al-Palimbani.”

Arabs and the Malay-Muslim World of Palembang

ʿAbd al-Samad hailed from Palembang, South Sumatra in the early eighteenth century
and it is from this place he takes the name (nisba) by which he is most commonly referred
to in Malay sources, al-Palimbani.9) However his Arabic biography neither supplies this
name associating ʿAbd al-Samad with Palembang nor gives any information about his
early years spent in Southeast Asia. Instead he is referred to by the Arabic nisba “al-
Jawi”—signaling an association with the broader region of the Indonesian Archipelago.10)
This Arabic source thus presents us with some new perspective on the life of this impor-
tant figure that compliments the information known to us through sources in Malay and
European languages.
Much has been written toward a biography of ʿAbd al-Samad, despite the fact that
few contemporary sources have been available to reconstruct aspects of his life beyond
his own surviving writings.11) ʿAbd al-Samad is known to be the author of a number of

9) From internal evidence from his surviving works we know, for example, that ʿAbd al-Samad dated
his work entitled Hidayat al-Salikin at Mecca in 1192 H./1778 C.E., and the Sayr al-Salikin at Taʾif
in 1203 H./1789 C.E. These dates are taken from the colophons of the Dar Ihya al-Kitab al-Arabiyya
Indunisiyya letter-press edition of the Sayr al-Salikin, 4 vols. (Jakarta: n.d.), and the lithograph
edition of the Hidayat al-Salikin published in Indonesia by Sharika Maktaba al-Madiniyya, 1354
H./1935 C.E.
10) On the use of “Jawa” and “Jawi” to refer to the Indonesian Archipelago, its people, and its products,
see Feener and Laffan (2005); Laffan (2009a; 2009b).
11) Beyond ʿAbd al-Samad’s own writings, another source base that has been used by some in attempts
to reconstruct his biography comes from later Malay-language texts such as the Tarikh Salasilah
Negeri Kedah (1968); See Abdullah (1980, 95–107). The validity of such texts as reliable sources of
information is, however, subject to question in light of such claims as their account of his death as
a centenarian martyr in a jihad against the Buddhist Siamese. While there is no other information
suggesting that ʿAbd al-Samad ever returned from Arabia to Southeast Asia, some local Muslims
find support for this claim in sites regarded as his burial place in both Palembang and Patani (South-
ern Thailand). See, for example: http://pondhuk.blogspot.sg/2013/02/kematian-syekh-abdusshamad-
al-palimbani.html. Accessed June 1, 2015.
ʿAbd al-Samad in Arabia 263

works in both Malay and Arabic, including works in the Islamic religious sciences and an
influential invocation to jihad.12) The bilingual body of work that he produced reflects the
cultural milieu that characterized his South Sumatran birthplace, as well as the cosmo-
politan world of Islamic religious scholarship that linked Southeast Asia to the broader
Muslim world at that time.13)
In the eighteenth century, Palembang was home to a number of prominent Muslim
scholars and authors of Malay literature.14) The emergence of Palembang as a center of
Islamicate culture in the region was significantly linked to the growing Arab community
there and its role in facilitating increased contact between Southeast Asia and the Middle
East (Syamsu As 1996, 36–46). The increased Arab, and especially Hadrami, immigration
during ʿAbd al-Samad’s day was stimulated in part by the patronage offered by the con-
temporary rulers of Palembang. Attracted by such measures, Arab scholars migrated to
the banks of the Musi River where they came to take prominent places in the local
economy and religious hierarchy (B. W. Andaya, 1993, 204–241).
Such developments, however, were not peculiar to Palembang during that period,
as Arab immigrants and their descendants in other port cities and towns of the Indonesian
Archipelago became increasingly active in not only in the literary and cultural life, but
also in the politics of sultanates across the region during the eighteenth century (Ho
2002). This may be seen partially as a result of changes that accompanied the Dutch East
India Company’s (VOC) consolidation as a territorial power in the archipelago and their
concomitant withdrawal as a hegemonic naval force in the region. A number of historians
have noted that this had the result of temporarily recreating something of the “open and
pluralistic” patterns of commerce and communication on the sea routes that had been
characteristic of earlier periods (Chandler et al. 1987, 57).
These developments mark the acceleration and proliferation of processes that had
been at work across the broader region for some time. In the eastern isles of the Indo-

12) This last text is entitled Nasihat al-muslimin wa-tadhkirat al-muʾminin fī fadaʾil al-jihad fi sabil
Allāh, and is regarded as having inspired the prolific genre of prang sabi (“holy war”) texts in nine-
teenth century Aceh. For more on this, see Hadi (2011). Aside from his formal treatise on the
subject of jihad, ʿAbd al-Samad also wrote letters from Arabia to rulers in Java encouraging them
to take up arms against the expansion of Dutch colonial power in 1772. See Ricklefs (1974, 134;
150–155).
13) Synopses of his works in both languages can be found in Drewes (1977, 222–224). There and
elsewhere Drewes (1976) included in that list the Tuhfat al-raghibin fi bayan haqiqat iman
al-muʾminin wa ma yufsiduhu fi riddat al-murtadin. More recently, however, Noorhaidi Hasan
(2007) has demonstrated that this work is more likely attributed to ʿAbd al-Samad’s younger con-
temporary, Muhammad Arshad al-Banjari.
14) For more on this environment and the writings that were produced in it, see Drewes (1977, 219–
237).
264 R. M. Feener

nesian Archipelago, for example, Arabs and their descendants born in ports ringing
the Indian Ocean were ascending to prominent local ranks, as attested to by the late
seventeenth-century tomb of Shaykh ʿUmar Ba Mahsun in the royal cemetery at Bima,
on the eastern Indonesian island of Sumbawa (Noorduyn 1987, 85, 109). This is one of
the earliest recorded examples of patterns of close association between Arab immigrants
and local elites that was reproduced with variation across the region in the centuries that
followed. In Aceh, for instance, the descendants of an embassy of Meccan sayyids estab-
lished itself as a new dynasty that ruled there from 1699–1726 (Crecelius and Beardow
1979). Soon thereafter, in 1737, a Javanese royal embassy to Batavia returned to the
court of Pakubuwana II, bringing with them an Arab shaykh named Sayyid ʿAlawi. This
new arrival at the central Javanese capital quickly rose to prominence, being granted
one of the Sultan’s concubines for a wife and charge over religious affairs for the realm
(Ricklefs 1998, 198–199).15) As a result of such collaborations, cosmopolitan Muslim
immigrants came to assume primary leadership roles in numerous communities stretch-
ing across the archipelago, including Siak and Pontianak in the eighteenth century
(Andaya and Andaya 1982, 93; Heidhues 1998). While ʿAbd al-Samad’s hometown was
not governed by an “Arab” dynasty per se, the Palembang elite too came to include a
number of migrant Arabs during his day—one of whom is known to have married the
sultan’s sister in 1745 (Azra 2004, 112). Later, as the British established themselves in
Batavia during their Napoleonic-era interregnum, news of that major shift in the power
dynamics of the Indonesian Archipelago were communicated to the sultan of Palembang
via Arab emissaries.16) As the life and work of ʿAbd al-Samad further demonstrate, move-
ment between and among the ports and polities of the Middle East and Southeast Asia
was complex and multi-vectored during the long eighteenth century.

Teachers and Texts

With this context established we can take up with the account of ʿAbd al-Samad’s life
contained in our Arabic biographical text. The entry opens by noting the date of his arrival
at the Yemeni town of Zabid in 1206 H./1791 C.E. The author then goes on to praise this
Sumatran sojourner as, “the very learned friend of God, the deeply understanding and

15) Michael Laffan has recently reconstructed the subsequent course of Sayyid Alawi’s life after his
rapid ascent in Javanese court circles, and through his transportation, detention, and later career
among the expanding Muslim community of Cape Town, see Laffan (2013).
16) The royal receptions of Said Zain Bafakih, Said Bakar Rum, and Syarif Muhammad are recorded in
a Palembang Malay manuscript edited by Woelder (1975, 88–89).
ʿAbd al-Samad in Arabia 265

pious notable of Islam, [a] productive ulama and [one of the] masters of knowledge of
many fields.” These accolades were due in no small part to his prestigious scholarly
pedigree, which established ʿAbd al-Samad firmly within the Muslim scholarly elite of
his day. As our text tells us:

He studied under the scholars of his age, from among the people of the two noble sanctuaries
such as the learned Shaykh Ibrahim al-Rais . . .17) Shaykh ʿAta al-Misri . . .18) Shaykh al-ʾAlama
Muhammad Jawhari . . .19) and Shaykh Muhammad b. Sulayman al-Kurdi,20) among others.

At Zabid, ʿAbd al-Samad was fully integrated into the heart of a network of Arabophone
Muslim scholars that extended across the entire range of the Indian Ocean littoral and
beyond, from West Africa to China. This is a milieu in which the author of our text, al-
Ahdal, was fully at home—working as he did in that cosmopolitan center of Islamic learn-
ing during what has been characterized as “a period of intense and international scholarly
interaction among Sunnis” (Haykel 2014).
In addition to an extensive listing of the people he studied with during his time at
Zabid, this biographical entry on ʿAbd al-Samad moves on to highlight some of the sub-
jects and, importantly, even mentions some of the specific Islamic texts, that he studied
with those teachers:

. . . he turned toward Sufism and directed most of his work toward studying and teaching al-
Ghazali’s Ihya ʿulum al-din. He called on people to occupy themselves with this book, and thus
increased its prestige and maximized its benefits. . . .

Our text then goes on to emphasize, through reference to classical Arabic poetry and
pious anecdotes, the exceptional qualities of Ghazali’s (d. 1111) work and the benefits
which its study brings to those who pursue it.

17) Abu al-Fawz Ibrahim b. Muhammad al-Raʾis al-Zamzami al-Makki (1110–94 H./1698–1780 C.E.), a
teacher of Murtada al-Zabidi and a student of al-Basri and ʿAta al-Misri who took an ijaza in the
Khalwatiyya from Mustafa al-Bakri (see below). This scholar also had a number of important
connections with the al-Ahdal and Mizjaji families in the Yemen (Azra 2004, 114).
18) ʿAtaʾAllah b. Ahmad al-Azhari al-Misri al-Makki, the renowned muhaddith and teacher of Ibrahim
al-Raʾis and Murtada al-Zabidi. He also may have had some connection with the leading family of
the Egyptian Tasqiyaniyya al-Ahmadiyya order, who continued their dominance of the organization
into this century. See de Jong (1978).
19) Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Jawhari al-Misri (1132–86 H./1720–72 C.E.), a well-known Egyptian
traditionist with a highly-regarded isnad who strengthened his connections to our networks of
scholars through his extended study and teaching visits to the Haramayn (Azra 2004, 115).
20) Muhammad b. Sulayman al-Kurdi (1125–94 H./1713–80 C.E.), a Sufi and legal scholar who was a
student of al-Bakri, al-Nakhli, and al-Basri (see below).
266 R. M. Feener

It is told that one of those who occupied themselves with this work read a book entitled, Tanbih
al-Ihya . . . and turned towards studying it, but when he was just about to finish it, he lost his sight.
He wept and supplicated God. . . . He then turned toward God, Great and Exalted, in repentance,
and God restored the man’s sight. Shaykh Husayn b. Abd Allah al-Hadrami21) says, “the Ihya treats
against the poisons of forgetfulness; it arouses the exoteric ulama and extends the knowledge of
the firmly established scholars.”

Al-Ghazali’s Ihya occupied an increasingly prominent place in the scholarship of


reform-minded Sufis during ʿAbd al-Samad’s day. A number of scholars have commented
on a perceived shift in orientation in Indonesian Islam in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries—one that included a renewed appreciation of al-Ghazali’s work. Such develop-
ments have parallels extending well beyond Southeast Asia, for as John Voll has noted a
resurgence of interest in al-Ghazali’s work was one of the hallmarks of Sufi reform move-
ments in Arabia, Africa, India, and elsewhere during the eighteenth century (Voll 1982,
36, 58, et passim).22) Debates over the terminology used to refer to reformist trends
among Sufi scholars of the period aside, it is clear that across the Muslim world major
shifts in Islamic thought were taking place.23)
These complex developments were, moreover, by no means limited to Sufism, but
were integrally related to the reorientation of work in other fields ranging from juri-
sprudence and hadith scholarship to historiography and lexicography. ʿAbd al-Samad
himself was to become a major figure in this project of reforming Sufism in Southeast
Asia during this period, as is clear from his most popular surviving works in the form
of Malay-language interpretations of and elaborations upon al-Ghazali’s writings.24)
The influence of these texts on the subsequent development of the Malay kitab curricu-
lum of Southeast Asian circles of Muslim learning can be traced through the works
of major Malay authors such as ʿAbd al-Samad’s younger colleague Daud al-Patani, who
hailed from what is today southern Thailand and flourished in the early nineteenth

21) The published edition of the Arabic text has a footnote here that reads: “He is Husayn b. ʿAbd Allah
Ba Fadl (d. 979 H./1571–72 C.E.). Please see our book Masadir al-fikr al-Islami, 286.”
22) For more on the dynamics of debates on and within Sufism during this period, see collected essays
in de Jong and Radtke (1999) by Esther Peskes, Bernd Radtke, Kamel Filali, R. Sean O’Fahey, Marc
Gaborieau, Jonathan N. Lipman, and Azyumardi Azra.
23) For a brief overview of these recent debates within Islamic Studies, see Reichmuth (2002).
24) Entitled Hidayat al-Salikin and Sayr al-Salikin, these works are still printed in Jawi script and avail-
able in kitab shops in various parts of the Southeast Asia. Drewes (1977, 222–223) mentions other
editions of these texts that were published at Mecca, Bombay, Cairo, and Singapore. The Hidayat
al-Salikin has generally served as a beginner’s introduction to Sufism, drawing in part on Ghazali’s
Bidayat al-Hidaya (and other works), and arranged broadly along the Bidayat’s organizational
scheme. More advanced students then continue with the larger, four-volume Sayr al-Salikin on a
path that should lead adepts eventually to al-Ghazali’s Ihya itself (Kushimoto 2014).
ʿAbd al-Samad in Arabia 267

century.25) Al-Patani spent most of his scholarly career at Mecca, which has long been
recognized as an important center for Southeast Asian Muslims studying in the Arabian
peninsula. However for earlier generations of such itinerant Islamic scholars, other
cities also held considerable appeal. Prominent among such regional centers of scholar-
ship in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was Zabid, located in the Tihama west
coastal plain of the Yemen.

Zabid: A Southern Arabian Center of Islamic Learning

Zabid was founded in 820 CE when, in response to several local revolts, the Abbasids
appointed Muhammad b. ʿAbdullah b. Ziyad as governor of the Tihama. Soon, however,
this appointed official took advantage of the distance from Baghdad to establish his own
dynasty, which continued to rule the region for over two centuries with Zabid as the
capital (Wilson 1985). The city remained the center of administration under the Ayyubids
(1173–1229), who expended great energy in reconstructing its walls and building a
number of mosques and madrasas. By 1391, a survey conducted under the auspices of
the Rasulid Sultan al-Ashraf documented some 230 such institutions in Zabid (Hibshi
1977). Over the centuries that followed the city came to develop a far-flung reputation
as an important center of Muslim learning.26) In the seventeenth century, for example,
Zabid attracted Southeast Asian Sufi scholars including Yusuf al-Maqassari, who spent
his first years in Arabia there (Azra 2004, 89–91). Zabid continued to attract students
from throughout the Muslim world until the early nineteenth century, as evidenced by
various entries contained Nafas al-Yamani. Modern scholarship on ʿAbd al-Samad’s life
and work have tended to repeat very similar remarks on the importance of his studies at
Medina, and the composition of his most important works at Mecca and Taʾif.27) The time
that this scholar spent at Zabid, on the other hand, has been largely neglected in earlier
studies—although as our text makes clear it proved a formative part of ʿAbd al-Samad’s

25) Daud b. ʿAbd Allah b. Idris al-Patani was one of the most prolific authors of such books, and among
his works are Malay adaptations of al-Ghazali’s Mihaj al-Abidin. Biographical material on this
important Malay kitab author can be found, van Bruinessen (1998, 19–20); L. Y. Andaya (2012, 235).
For more on the production of Islamic scholarship in his milieu, see: Matheson and Hooker (1988);
Hassan Madmarn (2002); and Bradley (2010).
26) Attested to not only in the medieval texts of local histories (e.g. al-Dayba 1983, 47), but also in local
historical memory today by drivers on the Tihama road whom I have heard shouting: “Zabid, madinat
al-ʿulamaʾ!” (“Zabid, City of the Scholars!”) upon approaching the (now nearly ruined) town.
27) A popular recent example of this is found in the section on ʿAbd al-Samad in Iskandar (1996, 441–
443).
268 R. M. Feener

Arabian experience.28)
Our text gives us a valuable description of the time that ʿAbd al-Samad spent in
Zabid, as well as an intimate view into some of the ways in which particular inter-personal
bonds were formed and remembered between individuals across the expansive scholarly
networks of the eighteenth century. In reading this account, furthermore, one cannot
escape an impression of the admiration that the author of this text—an Arab sayyid from
the prominent Yemeni family of al-Ahdal—held for this Jawi shaykh from Palembang, as
we read that:

When our scholar arrived at Zabid, he continued to increase his exhortations toward the study of
Ghazali’s Ihya, and I read under him, thanks be to God, the first quarter of every chapter. I asked
him for an ijaza (document of certification) for the study of this book, to relate that which is good
in it and to benefit from its knowledge. He wrote for me in his own noble hand a very long ijaza,
it being his way that if a student came to him asking detailed questions and he saw something good
in the student, he would lengthen his praise of the student in the ijaza. He would also explain to
the student about law and literature to increase his adherence to it, and the student would see
clearly that which was presented to him. The Shaykh continued to explain for me the literature of
legal decisions and the requirements of a mufti: it is not enough only to inquire [into the facts of a
certain case] but if he has knowledge of the situation he must call attention to it in the writing of
his decision. . . .

Here our text opens a window on to the micro-dynamics of the specific ways in which
Sufism and the study of Islamic law were integrally related for many of his contemporaries
in the networks. This aspect of eighteenth-century Muslim intellectual culture contrib-
uted to various movements for religious reform and continued to influence developments
throughout the Muslim world for at least two centuries. Beyond this, our text also
provides a glimpse of the personal touch that ʿAbd al-Samad had as an inspiring teacher,
and how he was remembered by his former students.
The intimacy and generosity highlighted in al-Ahdal’s account here testify to the
importance of personal relationships in the construction and maintenance of scholarly
networks—something that, while rarely glimpsed in surviving sources, is crucial to
appreciate in developing our understanding of the broader processes through which the
Indonesian Archipelago came to be a significant part of the global umma (Johns 1978,
471). Such passages in this Arabic biography of ʿAbd al-Samad also convey a sense of
the respect that this Sumatran shaykh commanded from his Arabian co-religionists. The
text then can serve as a point of critical reflection upon abiding, un-critical assumptions
about Islamic religious authority that tend to view the Middle East as a place where

28) The major exception to this is Azyumardi Azra’s groundbreaking work (2004). Unfortunately, how-
ever, he was unable to consult the text of the Nafas al-Yamani in preparing that study.
ʿAbd al-Samad in Arabia 269

Muslims from many parts of Asia and Africa came to learn from “Arab” masters. The
relative positions of this scholar hailing from Palembang and his Arabian sayyid disciple
presented in our text thus point to a far greater range of possibilities in the kinds of
relationship formed between natives of the holy land and migrants from Southeast Asia
(and elsewhere) during the pre-modern period.

Sufi Practice and Scholarly Polemic

The next section of the Arabic biography of ʿAbd al-Samad moves on to provide a detailed
treatment of his place within the Sufi circles of his day. These passages elaborate ʿAbd
al-Samad’s credentials in renouncing the vanities of this world, as well as his generosity
in the sharing of his knowledge:

Our shaykh did not see any value in this world, and his magnanimity and generosity are regarded
as a wonder of wonders. He was asked by one of his best students for a book . . . and our shaykh
went to his book cabinet and said, “Please take from it what you like,” and the student took from
it a number of precious books of great price.

However most of the “Sufi” material of this biographical entry is concerned not with
hagiographic portraiture of the shaykh’s spiritual virtues, but rather with technical discus-
sions of aspects of devotional practice that were being energetically debated across the
Indian Ocean networks of Muslim scholarship during his day:

ʿAbd al-Samad took the [Sufi] way of dhikr (ritual “remembrance of God”) from his shaykh, the
great saint Muhammad b. Abd al-Karim al-Samman al-Madani.29) He stayed with Shaykh al-

29) Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Karim al-Samman al-Hashimi al-Madani al-Khlawati al-Qadiri al-Shadhili
al-Shafiʿi (d. 1190 H./1776 C.E.) was a student of al-Hifni and Mahmud al-Kurdi (d. 1780), khalifa
of Mustafa Kamal al-din al-Bakri in the Khalwatiyya order. He was born and died at Medina,
1132–89 H./1719–75 C.E. The listing of his works in Brockelmann (1937–42, SII, 535, 629) has
been revised in Drewes (1992). Muhammad al-Samman is of particular importance here as the
order he established at Medina gained considerable popularity in Muslim Southeast Asia, due to a
considerable extent to the work of his “Jawi” pupil ʿAbd al-Samad and his contemporary Palembang
countrymen including Muhammad Muhyiddin b. Shaykh Shihabuddin. By the latter half of the
nineteenth century, the order had established itself in several centers in the region, including the
Dutch capital of Batavia (Drewes 1977, 224–225). By the late nineteenth century Sammaniyya
practices came under considerable critique from a number of prominent members of the Arab com-
munity in Southeast Asia, including Salim b. ʿAbd Allah b. Sumayr and Sayyid ʿUthman b. ʿAbd Allah
b. ʿAqil b. Yahya (Drewes 1992, 83–84). For more on his al-Samman and his students from South-
east Asia, see Muthalib (2007). The Sammaniyya order was also widely propagated in Ethiopia and
the Sudan. See O’Fahey (1994, 91).
270 R. M. Feener

Samman for a considerable time and took from him his way, as he in turn took it from the famous
Shaykh Mustafa al-Bakri.30) Al-Samman and al-Hifni 31) both had the same shaykh and their way is
to pronounce the dhikr aloud, the recitation coming together [to a crescendo at its conclusion].32)

Over the paragraphs that follow in the entry it becomes clear that practices such as jahr
(the audible pronunciation of Sufi dhikr) were the subject of considerable controversy
among the original audience of this text:

It is clear that this [vocalized dhikr] is not forbidden or discouraged, as its detractors would have
it, for a group of scholars including al-Jalal al-Suyuti 33) and the very learned al-Kitan34) have written
on the evidence for the permissibility of reciting the dhikr aloud. Among those who have written
extensively on this subject is Shaykh Mulla Ibrahim al-Kurani 35) who has a great treatise36) on the
evidence for vocalized recitation (jahr). . . .37)

30) Mustafa b. Kamal al-Din b. ʿAli al-Siddiqi al-Hanafi al-Khalwati Muhyi al-Din al-Bakri (d. 1162
H./1749 C.E.) was an eighteenth-century khalifa of the Qarabashi branch of the Khalwatiyya order.
He also issued the ijazat khilafa of the Khalwatiyya order to the later Egyptian founder of the al-
Afifiyya branch of the Shadhiliyya order (Elger 2014).
31) Najm ad-Din Muhammad b. Salim b. Ahmad al-Shafiʿi al-Misri al-Hifni al-Husayni (d. 1181 H./1767–
68 C.E.) was an author of Shafiʾi legal and devotional works (Brockelmann 1937–42, SII, 445) who
was the Shaykh al-Azhar and head of the Khalwaityya order in Egypt during his day. See Marsot
(1972, 150). For more on the sub-order founded by him (al-Hifniyya): de Jong (1978, 114–116). The
networks he was involved in extend even further, as his brother Yusuf al-Hifnawi was a colleague
of Muhammad Murtada al-Zabidi and his students included Jabril b. Umar, the foremost teacher of
Uthman dan Fodio (Voll 1982, 81).
32) The interpolated rendering of the last sentence is based upon the practice of a Sammaniyya dhikr
session as I have observed it at a session led by a Sudani shaykh and his disciples in Sanaʿa during
early August, 1997.
33) i.e. Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti(d. 911 H./1505 C.E.). This renowned Egyptian scholar was the author of
several works which have long been popular in Muslim Southeast Asia and continue to be used
there today. For more on al-Suyuti, see Sartain (1975). For the adaptation of one of his more well-
known works in Southeast Asia, see Riddell (1990).
The published edition of the al-Ahdal’s Arabic text has a footnote here that reads, “His book is
entitled, Natija al-fikr fi al-jahr biʾl-dhikr.”
34) The published edition of the Arabic text has a footnote here that reads, “Perhaps this is the Sufi
Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahid al-Kitani (d. 1289 H./1872–73 C.E.).”
35) Ibrahim b. al-Sharazuri al-Hasan Shahrani al-Madani al-Kurani (d. 1101 H./1690 C.E.), the Kurdish
scholar and mystic who studied throughout the Muslim world before settling in Medina where he
succeeded his famous teacher al-Qushashi upon the latter’s death in 1071 H./1661 C.E. (EI2, V:
432b, 525b). This particular scholar had a profound effect on the development of Islam in Southeast
Asia during the seventeenth century via the mediation of his Sumatran colleague ʿAbd al-Raʾuf
al-Singkli. See Johns (1978).
36) The published edition of al-Ahdal’s Arabic text has a footnote here that reads, “Entitled al-Jawabat
al-Ghurawiyyat.”
37) Kurani’s position on vocal dhikr had also influenced earlier generations of Muslim scholars from
Southeast Asia, including the seventeenth-century Acehnese shaykh ʿAbd al-Raʾuf Singkili (Le Gall
2005, 101–102).
ʿAbd al-Samad in Arabia 271

Shaykh Ibrahim continues on to say, and this is clearly indicated in the hadith of Abi Musa
al-Ashari, in the two sound collections, and elsewhere in the texts of Bukhari on jihad: “Abu Musa
said that we were with the Prophet (prayers and peace be upon him) and when we approached a
valley we pronounced the tahlil and takbir, raising our voices, and the Prophet (prayers and peace
be upon him) said, ‘Oh people, stay your voices’.
. . . The Prophet exhorted gently to abandon this practice of extreme shouting, but not to
abandon jahr altogether. And among the evidence for this is the meaning of jahr in the Holy Qurʾan,
“And you (O reader!) bring your Lord to remembrance in your very soul, with humility and in
reverence without loudness in words. . . .” 38) Thus that which must be abandoned is the loud
shouting and not jahr altogether. This verse and the sound hadith indicate the legality of jahr in
the recitation of dhikr and its thorough recommendation.

In this discussion of jahr included within his tabaqat entry on ʿAbd al-Samad, al-Ahdal
goes to considerable lengths to contextualize and re-interpret texts of Qurʾan and hadith
that were frequently deployed by critics of vocalized dhikr in his own attempts to defend
the legitimacy of the practice. The fact that so much attention is given to debates on the
permissibility of the practice of jahr in this short biography of ʿAbd al-Samad indicates
something of the importance of this issue to him and those, like our author al-Ahdal, who
studied under him in the Muslim scholarly networks of the period. It also enables us to
delineate some of the significant fault lines that created internal divisions even among
scholars who moved and assembled along the same network pathways across the Muslim
world at that time.39)

Nodes in the Scholarly Networks

After this rather lengthy digression on the technical aspects of ʿAbd al-Samad’s devotional
practice, and some notes of praise for ʿAbd al-Samad’s teacher Muhammad al-Samman,
our text draws to a close with his authority for these practices being linked back once
again to the specific teachers he studied with in the networks:

. . . among his shaykhs is the above-mentioned Shaykh Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Karim al-Samman,
and Shaykh al-Kabir al-Mustafa Bakri, [and] a group of them, al-Shaykh Muhammad al-Daqaq and

38) Qurʾan (7, al-Aʿraf, 205).


39) Polemics over the legitimacy of vocalized, as opposed to silent dhikr, pursued by Sufis involved in
the scholarly circles of eighteenth-century Yemen came to be part of significant social and political
cleavages in several parts of the Muslim world, including China. For more on this see Lipman (1997,
85–93).
272 R. M. Feener

al-Sayyid Ali al-ʿAttar,40) living in Mecca with their scholarly lineages reaching back to Nakhli41)
and Basri.42)

With this last list of scholars in ʿAbd al-Samad’s lineage, we are once again reminded that
the networks of this Sumatran-born scholar in southern Arabia had connections that
extended from the most distant corners of the Muslim world to the very center of Mecca
itself. As Azyumardi Azra’s work has so clearly mapped, Arabia was a site of productive
encounter between scholars from widely diverse ethnic and geographical origins who
had become integrated into a shared culture of Islamic learning (Azra 2004, 8–31). The
life and work of the scholar as presented by texts like the tabaqat entry discussed here
presents us with a focused look at the construction of a particular node in the networks
that shaped the development of Islam in Southeast Asia and beyond until the early twen-
tieth century. It must also be noted, however, that these networks were reconfigured
in significant ways over this period. Indeed, what might strike modern readers as the
conspicuous absence of any mention of either “ethnicity” or geographic origin in this
biography of ʿAbd al-Samad highlights the fact that such concerns were not at the fore-
front of how this individual was configured within the cosmopolitan scholarly networks
of his day—and should also caution us against attempting to view that period through the
lenses of our own contemporary conceptions of “identity.” The Arabia of ʿAbd al-Samad
was rather different from that of the “Jawi” scholars who settled in Arabia in far greater
numbers a century later, who as a group were both identified, and increasingly self-
identified as sharing a common identity based on their origins.43)

In conclusion, I’d like to comment a little more broadly on the use of previously under-
utilized Arabic biographical sources for the history of Islam in Southeast Asia. Such texts
hold the potential to highlight aspects of various sociological “subsets” of total history—
especially the intellectual, the cultural, and the religious—that might otherwise escape
our attention. Through the sweeping, synthetic works of scholars like Chaudhuri, Reid,

40) This reference may be to al-Sayyid Ali al-ʿAttar (d. 1250 H./1834 C.E. or 1254 H./1838 C.E.), an
Egyptian writer to whom several works of history and grammar are attributed (Brockelmann 1937–
42, SII, 720).
41) Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Nakhli (1044–1130 H./1634–1718 C.E.), a hadith scholar resident in Medina
who was a student of the prominent Egyptian Shaykh Muhammad b. ʿAla al-din al-Babili (d. 1077
H./1666–67 C.E.). See Voll (1980, 266).
42) ʿAbd Allah b. Salim al-Basri (1040–1134 H./1640–1722 C.E.), an important hadith scholar whose
students included Mustafa al-Bakri and the South Asian muhaddith Muhammad Hayya al-Sindi
(d. 1750). See Voll (1975, 38).
43) For more on the “Jawah colony” of Southeast Asian Muslim students and teachers at Mecca, see:
Hurgronje (1970); Laffan (2003).
ʿAbd al-Samad in Arabia 273

and Lombard we have come to recognize the development of some of the most significant
broad historical patterns across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean world during the
early modern period.
Gazing at these wide horizons from within the textual confines of our entry on ʿAbd
al-Samad, we might now be able to more clearly discern in the particulars recorded in
this text, reflections of these broader trends as they made themselves felt in the specific
times and places that he lived. These would include, inter alia, the rise of Islamic renewal
and reform currents and the growth of regional cities, like Zabid and Palembang, during
his day. Carefully contextualized readings of biographical materials such as the text
explored here thus might be pursued as a way in which to view some of these macro-
structures of la longue durée in relation to the micro-mechanics of continuity and change
in a mutually informative way.
In contextualizing our readings of specific accounts of written lives we must of
course acknowledge that historical structures involve more than just the sum total of
innumerable individual biographies. At the same time, we should distinguish our use of
such biographical sources from that of Romantic historians—and their post-modern ava-
tars—with their pervasive penchant for particularism. In our reading of these texts we
are not primarily looking for either “guiding personalities,” or the atomistic amplification
of isolated, internally-verified narratives. Rather, what I would like to suggest is an
approach to biographical materials that traces the paths of unique human lives with an
eye toward viewing the ways in which interaction with various areas of society’s “set of
sets” (Braudel 1982, 458-599) is integrated within the experience of individuals. Dilthey
might see such an approach as enabling us to “apprehend . . . an historical whole in con-
trast to the lifeless abstractions which are usually drawn from the archives” (Dilthey
1989, 85). I would simply suggest that biographical texts such as the one discussed here
comprise a potentially valuable source of detailed information for illustrating broader
themes set forth in more synthetic, structuralist works of historical scholarship.
Braudel once framed his critique of histoire événementielle in relation to an anecdote
about observing fireflies in Brazil:

I remember a night near Bahia, when I was enveloped in a firework display of phosphorescent
fireflies; their pale lights glowed, went out, shone again, all without piercing the night with any
true illumination. So it is with events, beyond their glow, darkness prevails. (Braudel 1980, 10–11)

In my approach to this Arabic biography of ʿAbd al-Samad, however, I have been con-
cerned not with the “flash” of one individual life as “event” in the darkness of the
uncharted past, but rather reading it in the somewhat brighter shadows of larger, more
enduring, historical structures. Working in this way, readings of texts like al-Ahdal’s
274 R. M. Feener

tabaqat could be seen as a process of simultaneously trying out different lenses to help
in refining our field of vision; with the hope that some of them might manage to catch
and magnify some of the warmer light of such firefly flashes in a way that may just give
us a better view of the broader structures of “Inter-Asia” Islamic connections.

Accepted: October 2, 2014

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